1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to field of process visualization and management and more particularly to the model driven process visualization and management.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method architecture describes a schema for organizing large amounts of descriptions for development methods and processes, such as software engineering, mechanical engineering, business transformation, sales cycles and the like. A development method provides step-by-step explanations for a particular way of achieving a specific development goal under general circumstances such as transforming a requirements document into an analysis model, defining an architectural mechanism based on functional and non-functional requirements, creating a project plan for a development iteration, defining a quality assurance plan for functional requirements, or redesigning a business organization based on a new strategic direction.
A development process takes several of these methods and combines method steps into semi-ordered sequences creating a structure that is specific to temporal development circumstances such as how work is to be organized over time. The structure also can be specific to one type of development project, for instance the characteristics of the development project including development software for an online system versus software and hardware for an embedded system. A process is defined based on a lifecycle, which specifies how method elements such as tasks are being applied and work products are being produced over time by particular roles within the process.
Presently, there are several frameworks available in industry for the documentation of methods and the specification of processes. Commercial method and process management products include the Rational Unified Process Workbench™ manufactured by IBM Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., United States, now succeeded by the Rational Method Composer™. International standards for schemas for method and process management systems also exist. The most widely know standard of this field is the Software Process Engineering Meta-Model (SPEM) version 1.1 released by the Object Management Group (OMG).
Modern frameworks provide a user interface presenting a structured view of a process in terms of process content. Process content, at some level, generally includes method elements. In some cases, the method elements can refer to external content elements, such as guidelines, templates and roadmaps that are external to the referring method elements (but not the model itself). In this regard, references within the method elements can be linked to the external content elements by way of a hyperlink enabled according to the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). It will be recognized by the skilled artisan, however, that maintaining multiple hyperlinks for corresponding external content elements can be challenging—especially for larger process models. Moreover, method elements can change as can paths to the external content elements, in both cases disrupting the process model.